Charles Peale Polk was the nephew of artist Charles Willson Peale. After the deaths of his mother Elizabeth Digby Peale (1747–c.1774) and father, privateer Capt. Robert Polk of Accomac, Va. (1744–1777), he was brought up in Philadelphia by his maternal uncle, Charles Willson Peale. He trained with Peale in art from an early age, and first advertised himself as a portrait painter in 1785. He was self-described as a limner (or non-academic painter), and in 1787, he advertised as a house, ship, and sign painter. He married Ruth Ellison at eighteen, with whom he had four children. By 1791 the Polk family had moved to Baltimore, where Polk produced many portraits; in 1793 he opened a drawing school and in 1795 a dry-goods business. Both ventures eventually failed, and by 1796, he had moved with his family to Frederick County in Western Maryland. From there he traveled in the vicinity undertaking portrait commissions, including a 1799 sitting with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. From at least 1801 the family—with nine children by now—was based in Washington, D.C., where Polk held a government clerkship (in the Treasury Department) beginning in 1802. Although there are few oils from these years, Polk began to produce likenesses in "verre églomisé." He married a Mrs. Brockenbrough c. 1811, and in 1816 married Ellen Ball Downsman. In 1820 Polk and his third wife moved to Richmond County, Virginia, where he farmed for the last two years of his life.